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A couple of weeks ago, we had our friends the Wylies come out for a visit from San Francisco. They have 12 or 13 kids, at last count, the oldest of which are entering that age where they're forced to study American history for the first time, and learn all of SchoolHouse Rock by heart. They drove up and down the New England coast for a week or so, hitting Boston, Philadelphia, New York and D.C. And while they were staying with us, we took them out to Concord and let them soak in all the Revolutionary goodness.
What did our friend Darcy find most impressive? Archie Bunker's chair in the Smithsonian. She's Canadian. We must make excuses. While they were here, we took them out to Old Sturbridge Village, a kind of living museum, recreating life in New England in the 1830's. I had heard about this a few times before, but we hadn't made it out there until this summer. I fell in love with the place, and immediately bought us a 3 year family membership. I'll write more about that another time. But this is one of my finds there:
Make my own cheese? Be the master of my very own bacteria, cultures and cholesterol? Oh hells yes. I came home and put out a foodie-call to a couple of buddies of mine to see if they'd like to come over and try our hands at making some of our very own cheeses. How hard could it be? All you need is some rennet (from the stomach lining of any of a variety of dairy animals), some citric acid, some not-ultrapasteurized milk (hmm. this one might take a little thinking), and some time. Both my buddies answered the call, and just said to schedule a time. In fact, they were so positive about the idea, that I began to get a little nervous. I'd never done this before, and I would hate to poison us all. I started thinking that a test batch might be in order. The milk was a bit tricky. The desire for the longest shelf-life possible means that they take pretty much all the good stuff out of your milk, and break down the lovely, delicious fat, proteins and bacteria that make for a good cheese. But some research on dairies that use low-heat pasteurization (and thank heavens for once that all the old hippies get vocal about 'back to nature' milk) and a quick trip to Whole Foods, and I'm good to go.
I started with mozzarella. According to the book, you can make mozzarella even if you're a ham-fisted monkey, and the tolerance on the milk and process is pretty wide. Better yet, it promised that the whole thing could be accomplished in about 30 minutes, and without much in the way of equipment or experience. 1 gallon of milk is supposed to equal about 12oz of mozzarella. Sounds good. The investment is small. The Critter even gave me a hand so that I could take photos to document the whole thing.
After a few minutes in the pot, I got the temperature up to 90 degrees F. Add your citric acid, and the rennet, with "a vigorous up and down stirring motion". I have no idea why up and down. I'm sure there's solid science behind it, though. Once done, just push it over to the side, and let it rest a few minutes.
The whole thing turns kind of custard-y. Sort of solid, sort of not. This is the beginnings of the set, and the separation of the whey from the milk solids. You end up cutting this up - I am pretty sure the cutting part just makes the next part a little more simple.
Look, Ma - curds! Heat this back up to about 110 degrees now, and stir slowly. It continues to separate further - eventually looking sort of like something you're not sure is ever going to turn into mozzarella, let alone something edible.
Meanwhile, I've been heating up a giant pot of water on the other side, to a not-boiling-but-I-spilled-some-on-myself-while-I-was-checking-the-temperature-and-holy-mother-of-god-it-hurt 185 degrees. (note: the directions were really this precise. What they really mean is "we're going to use this to warm stuff up later. You need it warm enough for that without boiling." But being precise I'm sure just avoids people writing in with questions like "how hot is "hot""?
Now it's time to separate the curds & whey. Every time I said "curds & whey" I kept thinking Miss Muffet actually sat down and ate this stuff, just like this? If only she knew that (according to my instructions) she was only minutes away from delicious mozzarella! Because this whey stuff looks pretty unappetizing...
After a few minutes of ladling, I have a colander full of curds. Our Canadian friend, Darcy, might have been unable to proceed at this point because of the temptation to turn these into poutine, but we pressed on through. Dip the colander into the not-boiling water a few times until it's stretchy and melty. Add salt, and pull like taffy.
In almost no time, we had what looked and felt remarkably like real mozzarella cheese. It was still warm, and the recipe encouraged us - encouraged us, mind you - to pinch off some and try some right there. Holy crap. We made really good mozzarella cheese.
Start to finish, it really was less than 30 minutes. I dropped it in an ice water bath for 10 minutes to firm up, and we made paninis with fresh tomatoes, basil and mozzarella for lunch. Over all, the process is ridiculously easy, and definitely gave me the confidence to try some additional cheese recipes with our friends. Cheddar & Parmesan next, and then I think I'll work my way up to a deliciously, decadently stink Stilton. Note: All cheese making materials, ingredients and instructions can be found on Cheesemaking.com
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Unpacking my hoe and getting dirty

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With the first part of the garden cleared, we're ramping up the readiness for planting. This past week saw about 20 inches of rain fall in 72 hours. At one point, when the water was rising rapidly enough for our sump pump to emit a little whimper of dismay, and the flow of groundwater streaming in through the nearly 300 year old stacked-stone foundation of our farmhouse basement was creating a sopping mess of whatever we happened to have left on the floor (fortunately, all the meat in the cellar is hanging), I had to run down to a neighbors and borrow a bigger wet vac. When the rain kept up for another day after that, I began trying to lay in a supply of gopher wood and looking up how many feet there are in a cubit. But eventually, the sun came out, and we're still (knock on wood) experiencing weather in the middle double digits. It's supposed to hit the upper sixties tomorrow! However, this is Massachusetts, I remind myself, and it's only March. I have to be wary of anything Mother Nature promises before May. While my brother, The Historian, has been calling me from his home in South Carolina, telling me about the vegetables he's already set out, we are still some weeks away from being able to safely plant our garden. April blizzards are a not unknown occurrence up here so far north of the Mason-Dixon line.
To give ourselves some sort of outlet for our burgeoning spring fever, we've taken to poring over the half dozen or so seed catalogs that have shown up at our door in the past months. Everything from a gorgeous glossy heirloom vegetable catalog to the more mundane (but still enticing) list of crossbred-for-heartiness, might-just-be-genetically-modified seeds and seedlings. If you've never looked at a seed catalog before, I highly recommend you go find some of your own. We had a few on the counter when we had our recent cider tasting party, and I swear to you, half the people that came by spent endless minutes thoughtfully flipping through the pages, oohing and ah-ing over the colorful images of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. It is probably a symptom of Northern Winter Life that our neighbors all find the same, almost sexual appeal in dreaming of seeing a fresh ear of corn again. As much as we really fell in drooly love with veg like the Turkish Striped Monastery Tomato or Laxton's Progress No. 9 Garden Pea , we had to face up to the fact that we are really not skilled enough gardeners to attempt some of these more delicate, but no doubt delicious varietals. We need things that include descriptions like "hearty" or "robust," or maybe even "it doesn't matter how hard you try, you can't kill this." We ended up with steady, somewhat less exotic Gurney's compiling a list that contains delicious looking, but somewhat un-inspired items like "Gotta Have It Hybrid Sweet Corn," "Improved Golden Wax Bush Beans," and "These Collard Greens Will Fill Your Freezer". Ok. I might have elaborated on that last one. (But it's true.) In a moment of organization inspired by my Bride and the home-bound limitations of the incessant rainfall, I carefully organized our order & vegetable plans into an elaborate Excel spreadsheet, complete with notes about what farmer's market stand we'll be sourcing our seedlings from (including getting all of our tomatoes from the Concord Tomato Lady. I don't remember her name, but we ended up making the most amazing home-made ketchup from her crop last year. Gorgeous.) With that done, I dialed up Gurney's and placed an order for $350 of seeds and such (including 2 pecan trees, which apparently you can grow way up here at this northerly latitude. Where the heck am I going to plant those? And will my Yankee neighbors know what a pecan tree is?) Either we're going to have a bumper crop of goodness this year, or I'm pissing away a bunch of money on tiny packets of disappointment once again this year. But either way, I can't wait for the weekend. The weatherman has promised us some more sunshine!
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Spring is near. And bottling

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I know Mother Nature is just messing with us, but this recent spate of warm weather has gotten us all in the mood to be outside, and active, and getting things ready for the onset of green-ness that I am too busy wishing is just around the corner. But first, let's talk alcohol. Our attempt at cider making had been percolating in the cellar for long enough, keeping our hanging meat company. I had nothing but a couple of very rough guidelines from a couple of books to go on, but I figured not-quite-five-months was about the right fermentation time, and I did what any good amateur brewer would do: I brought up the buckets, lined up the bottles, and gathered the children. I honestly had no idea if we had managed to create something drinkable when we brought it up out of its resting place. The steps to create a hard (fermented) cider are pretty much to put a bunch of raw cider into a bucket, add some sulfide to kill off the bacteria, come back a day later with a bunch of sugar of one sort or another, add some yeast, and seal it up. Don't touch it for lots of months. I opened this not knowing if we had created 15 gallons of vinegar or something else equally unpalatable. Like sarin gas, maybe. Fortunately, it turned out to be remarkably... not terrible. Actually better than that. It was almost... really good. Wait, take a look again at my kids helping me bottle it all. Have you ever seen anything cuter than a 2 year old operating one end of a siphon? We created batches of 'still' cider, and batches of carbonated 'long necks'. We painstakingly crafted labels for our brew, marking the batch that was "sweet(er)" and "less sweet". [What's the difference? Well, I used two different kinds of yeast, and two different kinds of sugar - honey & brown sugar. Unfortunately, I may have forgotten to label what went into which bucket. And so it's possible that I don't have any way of knowing how to recreate our favorite (the "sweet(er)"). This oversight on my part might drive my Bride - the Scientist by training and trade - just a little bit insane. Just a little.) After a couple of weeks of additional carbonation time, we invited over a bunch of neighbors and friends for a taste test. Critics agree, it didn't suck. We all pretty much preferred it a little bit sweeter (the other tastes more 'yeasty' - a bit more like beer, actually. For the record, both ended up at right about 6% alcohol in the end). Ok. One more picture of the Critter and the finished, labeled bottles. I really just took this picture to show you her shirt. You love it, I know. (If you want one of your own, go here) We'll definitely be doing the cider thing again this fall - it's certainly not an instant gratification thing, but I'm happy as heck with the final product, all in all. Which is good, because after a day clearing a season's bracken and crap from the garden bed, I was in need of something to relax the aches. Fortunately, my pair of young bottlers were on hand to help out once again. Those kids can be shockingly useful at times.
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